Mild Xenophilia
by piratesmiley
Summary: Peter and Altlivia make plans to save Olivia. Spoilers for the end of season two and season three.


A/N: I've had this finished for a few weeks but just now got around to posting it. This is a companion to_ Mild Xenophobia_ but can be read on its own.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe.

* * *

The road up to the soft spot was winding and mildly treacherous, if the contradiction was available. Peter seemed to be harboring more than his fair share of contradictions.

She looked over at him uneasily. Like he was going to start shouting again.

Now that he was able to separate fact from fiction, or fact from pre-established assumed fact, he was frightened. Truly, awfully shaken.

They were very similar, him and her.

The most frightening part was that he could see their whole lives. If nobody had interfered. If nature and biology happened, and Fate or Walter had left well enough alone. They could have been the best of friends.

Her ambition and his connections. Of _course_.

But it would become something so twisted and extreme that they would both, eventually and inevitably, surrender. Happily.

And live out pretty, singular life.

But that's not how it happened.

And Peter was, to a fault, loyal to Olivia, _his_ Olivia. This woman was – well, Peter didn't know what she was. He felt like he knew her now, and that was both dangerous and helpful, except that she is an excellent liar, much better than the Olivia he knows, so there is still a tiny part of him that didn't believe her when she told him about her mother or her sister or her past or her future.

Everything felt like one big joke. Wasted time. And he was the fool who swallowed the pill.

He could not save himself from his own bad mood.

"Do we have a plan here?" she asked quietly. That was new. Neither Olivia typically looked to him for his leadership skills.

"Not really," he said, like he didn't want one, like it didn't matter if they had one or not.

She rolled her eyes. He was being nuts about this and he knew it. But she felt bad about calling him out on it. This felt like it was all her fault. Whether or not that was true still remained to be seen. She did have the guts to tell him the truth, though. She might as well continue.

It wasn't like they were going to see each other ever again.

She shivered.

"I can get us into the holding facility but we're going to have to make it look like I'm unwilling."

He shot a wide-eyed look at her but returned to the road.

"You know where she is?"

"I'm 95 percent sure."

That was another thing that this Olivia did, that his Olivia didn't. She was less inclined to go with her gut. She gave him the numbers and let him interpret them.

He considered for a second asking where, and why, and how she was being treated, and who else was there, and a slew of other frenzied questions.

But he held his tongue.

"At some point they're going to try to assimilate her into society, take my job, my apartment, my life." She ended that last note with a twinge of discomfort, melancholia.

He felt a twinge too, but ignored it.

"Assimilate her?"

"Yeah, they'll break her down, tell her she's crazy, fix her up, and ship her off. Nobody will know the difference."

That was the third saddest thing he'd ever heard in his life.

Peter looked over at her, and she shivered again. This was so wrong.

Why did he feel bad for her? _Why did he have to like her so much?_

He hadn't really thought of it that way – that she had given up her life, up and left, to do this. Something his father ordered her to do. She had people waiting at home for her, too.

_God damn it._

"I'm sorry," he said. And she didn't know why exactly he said it but she accepted it nonetheless.

His hand graced her arm, squeezed, and left to rejoin the steering wheel.

"I think you're gonna have to shoot me, too."

He looked over at her, but her unfocused eyes wouldn't meet his.

He understood immediately and answered a second later. "You don't have to take a bullet for us."

And that was a slap to the face, because she wasn't a part of _us_ anymore. Particularly stinging, especially after being held by him for a month.

But she didn't indicate that or the other. "It'll be fine. That's the price I pay, then so be it."

Her brave face was nothing, though, compared to Peter's years of experience defeating it.

"There's another way to do this – a less violent way – I'm sure of it."

She stayed silent, though, and he began to grow alarmed. For a fleeting second, he imagined himself doing it.

And then he shut that down. "No, we're not doing that."

"It makes sense."

"I don't think shooting people ever makes sense," he retorted, in the voice he usually saved for Walter.

"It's not so fatal in my universe. You know that, you saw Walter's scar, or lack thereof."

"It still doesn't change the fact that I'm _endangering your life_."

"I'm not asking for a bullet to the head; I just need to be semi-incapacitated," she reasoned. As if you could reason something like this.

"So where, then, are you proposing?"

"I don't know, a leg, an arm, maybe?"

He just looked over at her, bewildered.

"This conversation is ridiculous," he muttered.

"So be it," she repeated quietly.

And then he remembered what he said to her, the moment he found out. Everything, rushing back. All the pain, the heat, the shards of façade left by the wayside.

"You're not selfish."

She took a minute, then:

"I know." Still quiet.

But he had the sneaking suspicion that she didn't.

"Are you gonna be okay?"

And he sounded so much like a little boy, and so much like an old man, wounded and wounding.

No wonder she fell in love.

"I'm gonna be great," she said.

And she hoped he believed it.

And they continued down the road of saving his beloved.


End file.
